


Exhumed

by eightbots



Category: The Traitor Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-25 07:38:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6186205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eightbots/pseuds/eightbots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Baru Fisher digs a grave for someone she loved, and for someone she did not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exhumed

**Author's Note:**

> i read this book in one sitting, while i was sick (bad idea, i'm much worse now), and i finished at about 2:30 in the morning. i woke up at 6 am and wrote most of this before i ate breakfast. this is a long-winded way of saying "i forgot half the facts, sorry". i wrote it anyway because i needed to vent. AU from the moment of doubt Baru has as she's riding away with Apparitor

_Think of what's waiting for you._

Baru Cormorant makes a crucial mistake. She looks back.

From there there's no turning back. She swerves to the right and an arrow she doesn’t see coming misses her steed’s behind by an inch. An archer and a soldier with a mace follow her. Another turns too sharply and is buried beneath his horse. A death sentence. Baru doesn’t falter. She doesn’t even notice.

Three thoughts occupy her mind: Warn Xate. Tell the Coyote to run. And – And… And.

Can she hope to catch up to Tain Hu? How can she know that she’d followed her orders, the twofold (threefold – she’d betrayed herself too) betrayal made to save her life, and not gone to Vultjag instead?

She can’t. But Tain Hu is loyal. That, above all, Baru knows to be true. That loyalty had been her rock during the last year. The foundation on which she’d built everything she meant to betray.

It was stupid to turn back. She knew that even before she did it. The 12 year old student inside her, who'd used the system to save a friend, was yelling at her to stop. To find the Apparitor, ask him again for the secrets behind the Faceless Throne.

But buried even deeper inside of her, behind layers of Imperial indoctrination and years of cold governance, was 10 year-old Baru. The one who'd loved birds and glass and all three of her parents. She did not judge Baru for her heart, or for letting her resolve crumble at the last moment. Because she knew that of all the things she’s done since she’d met Cairdine Farrier, this was the only one that would make her parents smile.

The camp is already in disarray when Baru charges back in. She rides straight through a crowd in the hopes of losing her pursuers, scattering soldiers and servants left and right.

When she reaches the command tent she slows, just enough to shout to Xate: “The Masquerade is coming. Everything has been a trap. Your sister is in on it. Scatter. Scatter!” And then she gallops off again, north, north north. Towards the only new thing she’s let herself care for in over a decade, and prays to Wydd and Himu and Devena it’s not too late.

Her horse dies 30 minutes later, still exhausted from the battle. She feels it shudder beneath her, and when it topples over she manages to jump off in the opposite direction. She doesn’t look back. To look back is to falter, and to falter again is to die. She’s probably dead already. She runs north.

Baru doesn’t hear the horses until they’re close enough to shake the ground beneath her. She hoped she’d lost her pursuers, but maybe Xate Olake had sent someone after her. Her labored breathing must have disguised their approach.

She keeps running. The horses keep coming. Baru belatedly realizes they’re coming from the wrong side. Skidding to a halt at the top of a hill, she allows herself one quick glance back.

Smoke, coming from the Wolf’s camp. Was it the Masquerade’s doing, or Xate’s cover? No way to find out. When she turns around again, Tain Hu and her entourage are already stopping before her.

Vultjag’s face betrays many things in the split-second before she stills it, but none of them are confusion. She has figured out the same thing the Lyxaxu had figured out, Baru knows immediately.

But all Tain Hu says is: “What’s going on?”

“Masquerade forces arriving,” Baru guesses, because that's all she has now. “Agents already in the camp, probably even Clarified. Xate Olake will be pulling everyone he can out, but Xate Yawa has been theirs.”

A dead silence falls over them. _So have you been_ , Tain Hu doesn’t say. Instead, she turns to her men. “Ride to camp. Save as many as you can, two to a horse. Don’t engage the enemy. Then scatter to the winds. We’ll make our own way to safety.”

“But Duchess,” starts a man, broad and bearded, a lieutenant, but Tain Hu stops him with an open palm.

“You are free of any obligation to me,” she says, looking at Baru. “I am no Duchess.”

They don’t argue, eager to save their comrades-in-arms. Baru Cormorant and Tain Hu stand alone, stripped of all their masks and stations. Baru waits for the accusation. She hungers for it, so she may finally confess and face her punishment.

But Tain Hu only reaches out a hand.  Baru grips it on instinct and allows herself to be pulled onto the horse. The ex-Duchess of Vultjag turns them around and spurs the horse into a slow trot. They leave the smoking ruin of the Rebellion of the Fairer Hand behind.

* * *

They stop only when dark falls, in woods Baru doesn’t know. Vultjag unpacks a tent and starts putting it up while Baru collects wood for a fire. They don’t speak. They haven’t spoken all day. Like a Masquerade prisoner, Baru waits in silence for her crimes to be listed, proven, and a sentence assigned.

Nothing comes. They go on like this for days, stopping only at night, and once at a farm where they’re given food and water and warm blankets. They give Baru her own horse in exchange for all the gold in her chained purse. Whatever happened to the rebellion, word has not spread this way yet. But the farm is isolated. They can’t risk going into town. If people knew even part of the truth, they would tear Baru apart.

A week in, Baru realizes that the silence _is_ her punishment. The first course of many, she’s sure. She doesn’t know where Tain Hu is taking them. She’s not sure Tain Hu does.

Baru bears it. She doesn’t feel the urge to make excuses, because she does not hope for forgiveness.

The night before they reach Duchy Vultjag – of course that’s where they’re going – Tain Hu approaches her and asks a simple question.

“Why?”

So Baru tells her. She tells her everything. Of the ships in Taranoke’s harbour, of her father Salm and how he’d died. Of the merchant who was not a merchant and the school and her cousin, the sailor and the exam and the assignment. She tells her of her ambition and her goals and all her many betrayals. At some point, when she’s been talking for too long, Baru sits down. Vultjag does not.

“It has all been for Taranoke,” she finishes, not bearing to look at her.

Tain Hu stares at her in silence. Inside her head, Baru begs for her wrath.

At last she says: “And now you’ve betrayed that too,” and walks away. Baru curls up on the ground she sat on, and the tears still won’t come.

* * *

They are taken into Tain Hu’s keep weeks after Baru’s final betrayal, through hidden ways. Ake Sentiamut greets them inside. If she knows what Baru has done she does not show it, but she doesn’t even glance her way.

When Tain Hu and Ake leave to discuss and plan, Baru isn’t invited. She doesn’t mind. For once, not knowing what’s going on feels like a blessing. She can’t plan, can’t calculate, can’t plot if she’s kept in the dark. The servants escort her to a room with a bath, the same room she’d stayed in on her first visit here, a century ago.

Baru gratefully sinks into the warm water, and drifts off.

She comes to when a strong hand grabs her by the back of the neck and hauls her upwards. Her face is wet. She must have slid under water while she slept.

“If you want to die, there are better ways to do it,” Tain Hu says.

“I fell asleep,” she mutters, embarrassed.

Vultjag pulls up a chair to the edge of the bath, and fixes Baru with a thoughtful look.

Baru looks back, too exhausted to feel the mix of regret, fear, sorrow and adoration she usually feels when she looks at the other woman.

“I understand,” Tain Hu says.

Baru doesn’t answer.

“I understand why. But I don’t understand how. How could a person bring herself to do all this? Lead thousands to their deaths for a lie. Manipulate a nation. Manipulate…” Here she stops. The careful, collected façade almost slips. Baru wants to reach out and tear it off, hear Hu shout and accuse her. It would kill her, she’s sure. It’s the way she deserves to die.

“You must have buried everything you were long ago.” Baru looks at her in silent confirmation.

“Then I have one question,” Vultjag says. “Why choose me that night? Why not one of the Dukes? It wouldn’t have made a difference. And you wouldn’t have risked their wrath in the night, which may have ruined all your plans.” She shakes her head. “I’ve been thinking about it since I realized what you were, but I can’t think of a single possible motive for that.”

There is an unspoken question between them. They both know Baru wouldn’t have made love to her that night if she were what the Dukes and Duchesses and the Necessary King wanted her to be. She wasn’t asking _how could you do that._ What Tain Hu was really asking was: _How could you do that to me?_

Baru remembers the feeling of waking up in Hu’s arms, the short, blissful moments of the morning before the Imperial Accountant in her reminded her of what she already knew she must do.

Suddenly, the water feels very cold. How long had she slept?

Baru stands up unashamed, like a true daughter of Taranoke as the water streams off her. She steps out of the tub, and wraps herself in a large towel that had been set out for her next to the fireplace. The warmth reminds her of Tain Hu’s too.

She turns around and looks pointedly over Hu’s piercing eyes.

“Because I wanted to tell the truth once, before I never could again,” she tells her.

* * *

Whether Vultjag was satisfied by that answer, or if it made any difference at all, Baru didn’t know.

They don’t see each other again for three days. Baru spends them in her room, mostly asleep. She’s honed herself into a mechanism of the Empire, and underneath that, one of insidious revenge. Now she has no way forward, and no purpose. She is adrift; waiting for the inevitable day someone she has betrayed catches up with her and takes their vengeance.

On the morning of the fourth day, Tain Hu wakes her herself. She’s dressed in travel clothes and riding boots. The same ones, Baru thinks, that she’d worn when she first arrived to Aurdwynn. They’re caked in fresh dirt, as if she’s already been outside despite the early hour.

“Eat,” Vultjag says, setting a breakfast tray on Baru’s nightstand. “We leave in an hour.”

She leaves again with no explanation. Baru shrugs and does as she’s told. She can’t remember the last time she asked a question.

They meet at the entrance, Baru dressed in a similar fashion to Tain Hu. Neither of them had packed anything, and no one was there to see them off. Ake Sentiamut rules Duchy Vultjag in all but name now, and she is busy.

“Shall we?” Tain Hu says, and steps into the cool Northern air. The last time they’d been here, Baru had been too stupid and too honest. Or not honest enough, from Hu’s point of view. Now they retrace the same steps as vague memories of that conversation swirl around Baru’s head. Does she still remember her census of birds? No. She hasn’t counted in weeks.

“Why here?” Baru finally asks as Tain Hu leads her down the forest path.

“Do you bury your dead on Taranoke?” the deposed Duchess asks in turn.

Baru shakes her head. “The sea takes our dead. Took our dead.”

“But I suppose it never took your father, Salm.” A gloved hand on Baru’s arm leads her off the path. The familiarity is unbearable, yet she still doesn’t put a stop to it. What right does she have?

The sacred place of the Belthyc people still stands, unchanged. Perhaps by the power of Wydd. If Baru could call on her now.

Tain Hu lets her go and steps around a fallen rock. She comes back carrying two shovels.

“The sea is a bit far,” she says, “so a burial will have to do.”

“Who am I burying?”

“Your father Salm,” Tain Hu answers. “And yourself.”

Baru doesn’t know what question to ask, so she takes a shovel. Tain Hu answers her anyway.

“Baru Cormorant is unforgivable. But I am Duchess no longer, so I cannot pass a sentence.  I cannot take revenge because I swore I would die before you, and my heart would not allow it. So you must bury her.”

Baru’s hands are shaking. She grips the shovel tighter in her right, and in the other the Imperial Accountant’s chained purse. She hadn’t even noticed she’d taken it, so deeply ingrained was the habit. In that moment, she knows Tain Hu is right.

“But why my father?” she asks.

“You did all this for him, and others like him. Like us. In Taranoke and beyond. That tells me he deserves a proper goodbye.”

There’s a heavy rock pressing down on Baru’s chest. Maybe digging will get rid of it. She nods her agreement.

Vultjag motions behind her. “There’s a clearing. Muire Lo was not burned among the trees. Come.”

It only takes them a minute. The clearing is small, barely big enough to fit a pyre and a couple of yellowjackets, though there was no trace of either now, except for a square of uncovered dirt among the grass. Without a word, Baru and Hu step to opposite sides of it and start digging.

It takes hours. The unyielding Northern earth is not kind even in summer, and Vultjag demands six feet.

“Otherwise the animals get to them,” she explains.

_There are no bodies,_ Baru wants to point out. _Except for me._ But she knows that that’s not the point.

Noon comes and goes by the time Tain Hu is satisfied. They stand shoulder to sweaty shoulder, braced on their shovels, and survey their handiwork. Two gaping holes in the clearing, and two large piles of dirt next to them. Hu’s grave is much neater than Baru’s, like she’d done this before.

_What now_ , she wants to ask, but Vultjag lets her shovel drop and turns towards her before she can.

Baru holds her breath. What does she plan to bury? There was a knife strapped to her side. Maybe some of her blood would be symbolic enough. Or has she changed her mind? There’s a grave for both of them.

Tain Hu reaches for her, and takes her chained purse. She lifts it over Baru’s head. She glances at her for approval before she casts it into the grave she’d dug, Masquerade sigil facing down.

“May you rest in peace, Baru Cormorant,” Hu intones. “May all your sins be mended with your passing, and may you find forgiveness in death.” Her voice is unbearably soft.

Baru says nothing. Together they turn to the other grave. Its edges jagged, its bottom uneven.

“Give me your knife,” she asks. Tain Hu does, hilt first. Baru takes it and cuts off a lock of her hair, which is her father’s. She gives Vultjag back the knife, and pulls a loose thread from the collar of her borrowed shirt, which she ties around the hair. With a deep breath, she tosses it gently into the grave.

Words stick in her throat. She wishes she could be as eloquent as Hu had been, but she can’t. So Baru does the one thing she hadn’t done since father Salm had not returned, but can do now. She cries, and gives him tears instead of words.

Tain Hu wraps her strong arms around Baru’s shoulders, and stays there until she’s all cried out. _Over how many graves has she wept,_ Baru wonders, _and who was there to hold her?_

Once she’s done, they stand for a while longer in silence, before Vultjag picks up their shovels and they start the burial.

Filling holes takes much less effort than making them. Baru thinks there might be a lesson there, but if there is, she doesn't see it.

“Where do we go now?” Baru asks when they’re finished.

Tain Hu shrugs, something that’s almost a smile on her face. “Our future is yours to decide. I will follow, as I swore.” She’s talking about more than just their destination. It’s obvious.

“Baru Cormorant is dead. And you are no liege lord. Your loyalty is only to yourself.”

“I swore my oath to Baru Fisher, not Baru Cormorant. And I swore as a woman, not a Duke. If you wish us to part ways, you must command it.” Now Tain Hu is smiling, though there’s great pain there too. Baru is sure her own face must mirror the same feelings.

She takes two minutes to think about it. Consider her options, calculate possible courses. Just like she always does. Vultjag waits.

“North,” Baru decides. “We go north. I want to see the Mansions.”

Hu nods her approval, and leads them back to the ruin. From behind another fallen rock she produces two large backpacks.

“A horse won’t survive the journey over those mountains. But we might, during summer.”

“You knew.”

“No. But with the Masquerade in the south and the bridges collapsed, it was the only direction we _could_ go, if we did at all.”

_“I had dared to hope,”_ Baru echoes, and Tain Hu bows her head to hide her smile.

They put on their backpacks, and Hu takes her hand. Baru looks down at their intertwined fingers many times as they begin their way to the mountains, and wonders if either of their hearts can mend after how she’d shattered them.

_If we dare to hope, maybe there’s a chance,_ she thinks. But she knows that if hers ever did, it would call her to save her home again. North is the wrong way to go.

But then again, Baru had never been very good at geography.

“Who knows what we’ll find,” she says out loud, and Tain Hu nods thoughtfully.

“Who knows.”

**Author's Note:**

> this was as positive as i could imagine things turning out. obviously there's no way Baru would actually give up, but she'll probably try something again in a few years. i live at [eightbots](eightbots.tumblr.com) on tumblr if you want to scream about Tain Hu with me, because i don't dare recommend this book to anyone. i don't hurt my friends like that.
> 
> one day i will write a story that will do to someone what this book did to me. until then though, i'll try to find a way to break into fictional words and rescue Tain Hu. she'll live forever in a coffeeshop AU


End file.
